Learn About Market Reach and Why It's Important

Marketing as a whole is somewhere between an art and a science. While you need to be creative in terms of developing a campaign that will attract customers and money, you also need to be able to quantify the results. Marketing reach is one of those quantifiable aspects that can help guide your company in the right direction.

What Marketing Reach Is

In its simplest form, marketing reach is the estimated number of potential customers you could reach through a specific campaign or advertising medium. For example, if a company is considering paying for a commercial spot on television, they will want to know the marketing reach, the number of people who will see their advertisement. This allows them to determine whether the cost is worth the revenue that could potentially be brought in by new customers attracted by the ad.

How to Identify Marketing Reach

The idea is simple enough, but you have to put some work into finding the answer. Upon determining your market reach, you must first consider these questions:

What makes your product or service unique?

Who do you want to sell your product or service to?

Why should people buy your product or service?

As tempting as it can be to answer these questions very broadly, saying that everyone should be your customer because your product or service is superior does not do you any good. Are parents going to be more interested in your product than a younger crowd? Is your service more popular late at night than it is in the morning? Does the cost limit the demographic capable of investing in it?

Answering honestly will allow you to move onto the second step: focusing on and researching your primary market, the people most likely to be impacted by your marketing efforts.

Once you have narrowed your primary market, you can determine which method of marketing will most appeal to them. Are they TV watchers or magazine readers? Would they appreciate a modern effort or a more classic approach?

The Purpose of Marketing Reach

There are many benefits your company can experience by dedicating time to determining your marketing reach. Here are just a few:

You can minimize risks. By investing time and money into your market research, you lessen the risk of wasting even more time and money on running a campaign that will flop.

You can plan ahead more easily. If you know how many potential new customers you may have, you can ensure that you have the appropriate amount of product available for purchase or manpower to provide the service. It may also lead you in the direction of which seasons will have more and less traffic.

You can fine-tune your messaging. When you know exactly who you are looking to attract, you can cater the language and tone directly to them instead of having to be generic in an effort to appeal to everyone.

Understanding and determining marketing reach is important to any business, no matter the size, age, or industry. If you don't know who your customers are, you won't know how to draw their attention most effectively, and you could end up hemorrhaging money trying unproductive marketing methods.